In parallel to the growth in use of online channels for accessing a variety of services, and performing a variety of transactions, identity theft has reached epidemic levels, and online account takeover and transaction fraud is growing at an enormous rate. Recent scams indeed show a sophisticated, determined, innovative and well organized online crime wave. Fraudsters are more adaptive than ever, modifying their modus operandi and techniques quickly to exploit new vulnerabilities. While the fraudsters do not limit themselves to a specific sector, their main focus is on the banking and financial accounts sectors (other sectors prone to fraud are government services, ISPs, telecom companies and healthcare and many others).
One issue is authentication—how does a service or transaction provider indeed know whether a certain user accessing a service and performing actions at a certain site is indeed who he or she claims to be. Most risk engines are devised into two or more categories, and their response time determines their categorization. Namely, real-time and time-delayed (sometimes called batch processing, day later or after-the-fact) risk engines. However, depending on the type of session or transaction, it may be desirable to perform an initial risk assessment within a desired amount of time, while also reassessing risk on an ongoing or continual basis, so that at any point in the life-cycle of an event, when a business process requires a risk assessment from the risk engine, such a response is available. This may include a risk assessment of an event that has occurred at some point in the past, where emerging events or data may influence the risk engine to modify the original set of risk decisions pertaining to that event.
Thus, a need exists for a risk engine that may accommodate different types of sessions or transactions, and perform a desired amount of risk assessment across points of time and with diverse influencers.